Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783)

by Ritchie, Charles

  On my breakfast tray was a gardenia in a glass of water. Anxious to miss nothing I was sniffing at it when the footman appeared. I felt that I looked slightly silly sniffing at the gardenia and I hastened to engage him in conversation about the day’s boat race.

  On the doorstep that morning we all stood waiting for the car to arrive. My host in white flannels had a cotton cap with a small, transparent, green window in its peak, my hostess in a pink dress and her little girl who was like an old-fashioned doll with circular pink cheeks, china-blue eyes, and golden ringlets. A Hungarian nurse went with the child as though they were two pieces of the same set of chinaware, as she too had the pinkest of cheeks and the bluest of eyes. The nurse and child both shone with cleanliness. I am not particularly fond of sailing, and I know less than nothing about boats, but the day was agreeable. I was sustained by the sensation that people would envy me seeing the America’s Cup Races on such a fine, fast boat and with such knowledgeable and truly sporting men. I was sustained too by the caviare and champagne and by the slightly heady feeling of association with people whose incomes outdistanced my own by astronomical proportions. The harbour was full of ships, and people kept on saying, “This is the sight of a lifetime.” I believed them readily enough. There was in fact nothing remarkable to see. The two yachts were somewhere on the horizon, the English one well in the rear.

  That night there was a dance. It took all my energies to wear an easy, pleasant expression. I was frightened of catching a glimpse in one of the mirrors of a pallid, ghost-like face and recognizing with horror that it was my own. As I knew hardly anyone there it was necessary to hide the anxious and slightly embarrassed air of one “who does not belong,” particularly in this case because, in the eyes of the guests, those “who did not belong” at this party could belong nowhere mentionable. All were talking the same unmistakable cosmopolitan language of the dollar, but it was not their money that filled me with exhaustion – it was their vitality.

  In the garden I was led up to old Mrs. Vanderbilt, who received me with the cordial simplicity of royalty. Her husband with his seedy beard does in fact look like an eccentric member of the German ruling family. One suspected him of epileptic attacks and a passion for collecting birds’ eggs. I was paired off with a woman who had recently with unflagging zest embarked on her fourth marriage. She was one of those invulnerable American women set in motion by some secret spring of energy who go dashing through life at such high speed that it is impossible to think of them except in terms of motion – from hotel to hotel – from party to party – from cocktail to cocktail – from bed to bed – and doubtless too from book to book, for American women have of course read everything. Her present husband is a pink-cheeked and amiable guardsman who, with a reckless courage which does more credit to a stout heart than to any appreciation of the laws of possibility, seeks to satisfy her.

  The young girls at the dance had skins the colour of warm sand which the sun has burnished and the grace of movement and easy buoyancy of those who swim through life on golden tides.

  9 August 1938. Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  The clammy air comes in through the windows. There is fog in that air, and at intervals there is the melancholy mooing of the foghorn. A tram goes by in the quiet street. As it recedes, its sad monotonous chant grows thin upon the air. When it stops at the corner it puffs like a stout woman with too many parcels. All sounds here are in a minor key, all colours dimmed by a slight disparaging mist.

  10 August 1938.

  The miasma of the small town – the terror that comes as you are shaving the next morning and remember the things you said the night before. Will it be repeated and distorted? Will your employer hear of it? Will it cause people to think you odd or affected or depraved? Will people say you are a communist or an advocate of free love? Have you hurt somebody’s feelings?

  The last of the three old Miss Odells is dead – foolish, ugly, innocent ladies coming down the aisle after Holy Communion, their silks creaking, their gold bangles tinkling. Now their big solemn town house is for sale and its contents will be offered at an auction next Wednesday, the proceeds to go to the cathedral diocesan fund. Already the china, the glass, and the silver are laid out on tables in the dining-room in preparation for the sale. The little silver vinaigrettes and snuff-boxes on the occasional tables – each has attached to it a numbered cardboard label as big as itself. Even the old mourning ring enclosing a twist of chestnut hair belonging to some dim great-aunt is labelled for the sale. A group of ladies of the diocesan guild of the cathedral are supervising the arrangements. Some are enthusiastic and stand in ecstasy before the Crown Derby dinner service. “Oh, what lovely old things,” they say. Others are disparaging, “I must say I thought the silver would have been finer than this – it is mostly plate and the dining-room chairs are falling to pieces.” One lady in particular richer than the others insists that the Waterford glass decanters are modern imitations. Her attitude is felt to be too superior and is resented accordingly.

  The Miss Odells during their lifetime had no desire to make new acquaintances. Most of the women who wander briefly through the bedrooms would not have been invited to tea in that house because they were “new people” and one did not know them. Now they open private little drawers in the old desks and stare at the religious prints over Miss Ella’s bed. An auctioneer pulls books out of the shelves in the library. The maids, still kept on until the house is sold, laugh and call out to each other in the upper rooms. I do not think the old ladies looking down from their Anglican heaven can escape being pained at the intrusion and the noise but perhaps as it is for “the dear cathedral” they do not mind. Most of the things in the house are not beautiful, but in the drawing-room placed on the closed top of the piano is a dessert service of ivory white Wedgwood with urn-shaped sauce-boats painted in Pompeian red with classical motifs of helmets, laurels and harps. It gleams immaculate among the heavy furniture and carved oriental screens. And high on the walls of the tall library are hung plates of Old Blue patterned in willows and waterfalls. From the bedrooms where every table is petticoated in white muslin one can see the wet lawns, the dripping trees, and (for the gardener cannot yet have been dismissed) yellow chrysanthemums tied neatly to small stakes. Then the fog rolls in from the harbour and all vanishes in a white mist.

  It is hard to open the heavy front door – there are so many polished brass bolts and bars – enough perhaps they thought to keep out time and change. As one walks away down the street the grave, pillared portico and the elms beside the stables disappear in mist. When the fog dissolves the house may have gone and in its place will be an ugly shadow that haunts all private homes. There will be a boarding-house, leering and shabby with an ingratiating grin and frowsty smell.

  12 September 1938. Washington.

  I had my first taste of Hitler’s style today. I heard the broadcast of his eagerly awaited speech at Nuremberg dealing with Czechoslovakia. He is certainly remarkable entertainment value. I listened for nearly an hour to him speaking in German with brief interpretative interpolations. At the end of that time my nerves were jumping so that I could hardly sit still. This was not because of the subject with its implied danger of war – it was that voice, those whiplash snarls, those iron-hammer blows of speech. What a technique! The Germans get their money’s worth all right – the long-drawn sentences with the piled up climax upon climax until the nerves are quivering – shudders of hate and fear and exaltation going through the audience. This cock-teasing oratory drives its victims frantic. If they do not have their grand orgasm of war soon they will burst.

  But every good story must have a point and the point of Hitler’s story is the outbreak of war. Instinctively every listener longs to get to that point. I heard an American woman say today, “I could not sleep a wink last night after reading the papers and listening to the broadcasts. I was so worried about this war scare.” How much anticipation do you suppose was mixed up with this genuine dread?

  As I b
elieve that England will not fight for the Czechs if it is possible not to do so, I think it probable that there will be no war at present. The above reflections can be kept in cold storage until der Tag comes. What is striking is the lack of a moral cause for and also the absence of any objective to be gained by, a war. If war comes it will be an exasperated reaction to continuous blackmail.

  14 September 1938.

  This may be one of those historical dates and may be fated to figure in future schoolbooks as the beginning of the Second Great War. The various steps leading up to this climax have had the dramatic excitement of a grand historical drama. One is prepared for the blood-and-thunder finale and it has become almost unbearable to have it so often postponed. We have been going about for months pulling grave faces about the horrid possibility of war, talking about the destruction of civilization, etc., etc., but deep down in our jungle depths have we not been longing for what we fear? Have we been willing this war? This is the same impulse which makes Emerson’s saying true, “A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.” It is human love of disaster to others, and living on this continent it has been possible to feel that one is watching a distant drama. This emotional desire for a climax has been heightened by the newspapers. The familiar vocabulary of exaggeration and dramatization, the horrific illusion are all employed to build up a story – the story of the European crisis, the outbreak of war – the greatest news story in the world.

  28 September 1938.

  We are now on the very edge of war. Already my feelings have changed since I last wrote. Perhaps I am already beginning to suffer from war blindness. I feel more and more part of my generation and my country and less an individual.

  The war offers us no ideal worth dying for – we make no sacrifice for a noble cause. We fight with no faith in the future. It is too late to pretend (though we shall pretend) that we are defending the sanctity of international obligations or the freedom of individuals. We are fighting because we cannot go on any longer paying blackmail to a gangster. Whoever wins, we who belong to what we call “twentieth century civilization” are beaten before we start. We have had our chance since 1918 to make a more reasonable and safer world. Now we have to go and take our punishment for having missed that chance. We have willed the ends but we have not willed the means to attain those ends. That must be our epitaph.

  Here in America it is “business as usual.” Tonight I have been listening to the radio for hours. It reflects the stream of normal American existence, the advertising, the baseball games, the swing music, but every few moments this stream is interrupted by a press bulletin from Europe. More mobilizations. Hitler may march before morning. These warnings from another world give Americans shivers down their spine, make them draw the curtains closer and huddle around their own fireside thanking God that they are safe from the storm outside.

  29 September 1938.

  Today it seems as though we are not going to have our war after all. I feel tired and slightly hysterical now that the strain is released. The crisis that we have been through shocked some of us temporarily at least out of a lot of our nonsense. Perhaps all this gab about the uplifting effects of war has something in it.

  15 December 1938.

  I am to be posted to London to the High Commissioner’s Office, leaving next month. This means the end of this holiday in Washington, for no one could take too seriously my marginal responsibilities in the Legation. If I have learned anything here it is thanks to Hume Wrong, the Counsellor of the Legation. Each of my draft dispatches has been returned to me with detailed emendations in his elegant script. He has applied acid to what he terms my “impressionistic” manner of expressing myself. He will not allow the word “feel” as in “there is a feeling that the United States Administration’s attitude is hardening.” “Members of the Canadian Foreign Service,” he says, “do not feel – they think.” The most gratifying moment of my time here has been seeing his report on my work which states that I have “an instinct for political realities.”

  I have loved Washington – the beautiful city itself. I have made friends here, friends made in this happy interlude who may last a lifetime. I shall miss Nora very much.1

  I feel a strong tug of attraction to this country and these people, yet I know that it is time for me to go. The prospect of London means taking up the real pattern of my life and responsibilities again. It has its dreary side – the oyster-coloured skies, the waiting for buses in the rain, the staleness and main morte of the class system everywhere. All the same I cannot wait to get back.

  1 Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, later Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge.

  1 This house and its estate were presented for public use by former Ambassador Robert Woods Bliss; the conference which made the plans for the United Nations was held there in August 1944.

  1 Levi Ziegler Leiter was a self-made man who amassed a fortune. His daughter married Lord Curzon and his granddaughter Sir Oswald Mosley.

  1 The house now belonged to Gladys Vanderbilt who was married to Count Laszlo Szechenyi, Hungarian Minister in Washington.

  1 The beautiful Magee sisters, Willa and Nora, decorated and enlivened the Legation as successive social secretaries to Lady Marler.

  1939

  17 February 1939. London.

  Being a Private Secretary is a busy unreal sort of life – unreal because it makes one’s day such a programme of events. One does things in a certain order not because one feels like doing them at the time or even because this is the order of their importance, but because they appear in that order on the day’s programme. This programme is dictated by the engagements of the Chief, who is in turn a victim of his engagements and spends most of his day in doing unnecessary things which he does not want to do. Yet neither of us is unhappy. We feel that the ritual of our lives is obligatory – we grumble but we submit with satisfaction to the necessity. A day of telephone conversations, luncheon parties, notes acknowledged, visitors received, memoranda drawn up. Exhaustion is merely staleness – we return with zest to the game. What an extraordinary amount of time is spent in saving our own face and coddling other people’s vanities! One would really think that the people we deal with were a collection of hypersensitive megalomaniacs.

  28 February 1939.

  Levée at Buckingham Palace. I fancied myself in my diplomatic uniform hired for five guineas from Morris Angel, theatrical outfitters, Shaftesbury Avenue. With me was my French-Canadian colleague. We waited for upwards of an hour standing about in a succession of dull rooms in the Palace – the ceilings were ornamented with plaster nymphs of pallid respectability – the walls with portraits of the Royal Family through the ages by artists who were very consciously on their best behaviour. The crowd of well-brushed men in the Army, Navy, and Civil Service did not make a striking colour scheme. It was only saved from drabness by the strong note of scarlet supplied by liveried footmen, beefeaters, and officers of the Guards. These latter were magnificent – the old ones who were court officials seemed as inhuman as heraldic birds with their tall white plumes, their wasp-waisted uniforms with monstrous epaulettes. Their aristocratic beak noses were so appropriate that they might have been ordered for the occasion with the rest of their costumes. The young guardsmen glistened with superhuman elegance – their crimson faces matched their uniforms – their hair and moustaches had been worked over by scrupulous hands. They did what Englishmen wished to do – they looked their part. The rest were middle-class and muddled by comparison. Groups of officers in khaki were as out of place as stagehands who had strayed into the midst of a gala performance. Judges pushed back their wigs and looked irritable – their stooping backs and loose bellies in contrast with the military rectitude of the rest. One thin little man with horn-rimmed spectacles wore white duck and carried a topee under his arm. A doctor from Borneo? Civil Servants in knee-breeches had to be careful not to be mistaken for the Palace waiters. It was boring waiting like that
and exchanging stares of assumed hauteur with other nonentities. My French-Canadian colleague paused before each mirror to examine his legs – he was worried about the prominence of his calves in their tight casing. “And this is costing me five guineas,” I said to him. “Cinq femmes,” he answered. At last we trooped into the picture gallery – Rembrandts, Vermeers – but we were too close to the Royal presence for aesthetic appreciation. Before I had time to take in how the man in front of me was executing his bow, I was walking across the floor, standing a second, and bowing, I fear from the waist, instead of from the neck only, as I had been taught. As I raised my head I had a glimpse of a surprisingly unreal and kingly figure in a scarlet tunic with a pink face. There was a flash of Royal azure eyes, a half-smile, and I was walking out like a patient emerging from ether.

  George VI looked his part. I am told that his ruddy air of health was due to make-up. This gives that touch of unreality which to my mind is a principal charm of royalty.

  The distinction of the occasion lies in incongruities – the superb pictures in the gallery and the Victorian clocks and vases on the tables, the splendour of the Guards, the shabbiness of the judges, the Tudor beefeaters, the Regency Hussars, and the Great War khaki, the mixture of style and colour which would be unthinkable if it had been planned, but which has grown up with the monarchy. Beside all this how made to order is the best of dictatorial display!

  5 March 1939.

  In the Park on a windy, spring day shadows come sliding along and vanish again, the breeze shifts, and the faces of people change with the light and shade. Everywhere is movement – nothing to seize. A painter was sitting with his canvas facing the bridge and the distant towers, ignoring the life around him. Ducks on ruffled cold-blue water, men rowing with certain strength as though we were in leisured summer. Three sailors sitting on a bench – two reading papers – one his legs apart and his elbows on his knees gazing at the ground, safe from the sound of command. A fair goddess of a woman – how unjust to be so sure that she was stupid. Little laughing cockneys with mis-shapen teeth – city-bred runts enjoying jokes. Two well-bred friends or flirts or lovers exchanging smiles of radiant supremacy as they watched the bouncing or slack-bellied nobodies riding in The Row. A young man with a neck of strength and a head of arrogance riding a fine horse. The shuttered pride in a few ruling faces – the quiet joy in moving within their well-cut clothes. The gazing, haunted, jeering, half-impressed, half-sardonic German Jews who move in and out of the English cavalcade. In the middle distance the black trunks and branches of trees backed by a mist of poetic blue. Damp fresh grass. From beyond the Serpentine came the pulse of a distant band and one’s feet fell obediently into step.